Studying more than 400 educational leaders, the authors propose a new model for leadership and management rooted in the belief that there is latent intelligence inside schools and educational organizations. Their findings suggest two dramatically different types of leaders, Multipliers and Diminishers. The five disciplines that distinguish…

Managing the human capital in education requires measuring teacher performance. To measure performance, administrators need to combine measures of practice with measures of outcomes, such as value-added measures, and three measurement systems are needed: classroom observations, performance assessments or work samples, and classroom walkthroughs.…

Brown University's Annenberg Institute for School Reform studied the accountability work of 18 Annenburg Challenge schools in 6 states. These schools' experiences show what inquiry-minded schools can do to take ownership of internal and external standards and use state-assessment data to improve performance. (Contains 15 references.) (MLH)

Discusses the current state of the American economy and the circumstances that brought it about, and suggests possible governmental policies to combat the combined problems of inflation and recession. (JG)

Educators and business people must recognize that there is no shortage of skilled labor but a shortage of jobs requiring skilled labor. Corporate America appears to be hiding decades of mismanagement behind presumed faults of the education system. The salaries of skilled laborers have actually declined 3 percent since 1987, and about 20 percent of…

Responding to Bruce Joyce's rebuttal in this same "Kappan" issue, authors reiterate conflict-of-interest concerns and evidence regarding Success for All's failure to improve academic achievement in Miami and elsewhere. Expensive programs unsupported by research distract attention from well-established principles for improving student…

Suggests that teachers establish educational achievement expectations for their students, that administrators review these expectations for appropriateness, and that teachers who exceed reasonable expectations be rewarded from special state-disbursed supplemental funds. (PGD)

For decades the principles of scientific management, borrowed from industry, have held sway in U.S. schools. Now these principles have been supplanted in the industrial workplace by new socio-technical theories. This article describes the new industrial management model and its implications for education. (Author/WD)

In the June "Kappan," Marc Tucker summarized the "Tough Choices" report, the sequel to a report issued in 1990 by a predecessor group, which attributed the nation's low productivity growth in the 1970s and 1980s to inadequate American schools. The authors critiqued it and charged Tucker with trying to stampede policy makers into adopting reckless…

Alan Krueger's reanalyses of Eric Hanushek's school-productivity data show that Hanushek's "money doesn't matter" conclusions (influential in several states' education-finance hearings) have no factual basis. Hanushek excluded Tennessee's student/teacher ratio study (Project STAR). Also, class size is influencing students' success in…

Our current education system is based on Fordism, a mass production model that separated narrowly skilled workers and centralized resources. Michael Hammer's principles of flexible design (which include developing a cross-functional perspective, organizing around outcomes, encouraging worker self-sufficiency, combining information processing with…

Productivity growth (and its connections with schools) may be mysterious, but experts continue to document an expanding U.S. economy. A University of Wisconsin study described in the Fall 1999 "ERS Spectrum" found a mismatch between teachers' actual and recommended grading practices. Maybe the literature is unreasonable. (MLH)

The author discusses how cooperative partnerships between school and parents promote student achievement and have the potential to help resolve the crisis in educational productivity. (MD)

Rebuts proposals for educational reform advanced in the same issue by Robert L. Ebel. Accuses Ebel of offering insufficient evidence for his claims, of relying upon the indicators of productivity as if they were the means to increase productivity, and of failing to place responsibility for learning on the student. (Author/WD)

We are creating an educational meritocracy in which education and training are the only paths to success. More and better vocational education is needed to help people develop specific job skills and adapt to workplace changes, participate in management decisions, cooperate with one another, and develop a flexible, entrepreneurial outlook.…